[Openfontlibrary] Non-Copyleft Openfontlibrary

[Dave Crossland]

2008/11/2  <Fontfreedom at aol.com>:
> The single priority I have for openfontlibrary is:
> Creating a new openfontlibrary without any copyleft fonts. (and banning any
> new ones from appearing)

Each of us have our preferred way of licensing fonts.

I personally think the GPL is the best font license; many think the
OFL is best; you think PD is best.

Since all of these licenses are free software licenses, and we all
think software freedom is important, we have a consensus that we
should focus on, and not work to exclude other members of our
community.

Copyleft fonts are free software fonts. I'm more than happy to discuss
the pros and cons of copyleft itself and how it relates to fonts, but
I see that as a totally theoretical discussion. In terms of action,
consensus and inclusiveness is very valuable.

> Initially, Openfontlibrary was created as a place for fonts dedicated to the
> Public Domain.

Jon Philips set up the site as a direct copy of the Open Clip Art
library; that is, the codebase and much of the text on the site was
directly copied from OCAL and slightly changed - replacing "clip art"
with "font" was basically it :-)

That license choice and the text promoting PD fonts was not a well
thought out policy that came out of community discussion and
consensus; it was Jon throwing getting the site online ASAP.

Since then there has been a consensus that the site should recommend
the SIL Open Font License, and accept any free software font.

> I'm mostly afraid openfontlibrary is moving in the direction of becoming the
> (however small) sourceforge of fonts.

That is the basic idea of the site - although I wouldn't put it like
that because SourceForge is a proprietary web service with lots of
adverts for proprietary software, so I avoid mentioning it generally
:-)

> (Sourceforge is a popular open source
> software website featuring mostly copyleft software.)

Sourceforge doesn't promote copyleft licensing, AFAIK - it features
mostly copyleft software because copyleft licenses are significantly
more popular that non-copyleft licenses.

> Remember, I own the openfontlibrary.com and .net domains, the non-copyleft
> version of openfontlibrary could go there. I started talking privately with
> (rejon) about this idea last year, but that never really went anywhere.
>
> I understand the majority (but not all) of the people involved with this
> project are pro-copyleft, but I really want to have a non-copyleft
> openfontlibrary.

I am very grateful to you for registering those domain names, and
pointing them to the .org site, and I would be very sad to see them
pointed to a different site. I'd even be willing to purchase them from
you, if you feel you no longer want to support the OFLB.

However, I think the new OFLB site should have a few prominent pages
that list "All PD fonts" "All OFL fonts" "All GPL fonts".

Would that be an acceptable compromise for you? :-)